Overview

WORK IN PROGRESS

The results of our earlier excavations in the large monumental urban complex showed the manner in which the Temple Terrace is emerging as perhaps the single most monumental and best preserved stone structure of third millennium Syro-Mesopotamia.

Already by Early Dynastic III (middle of the third millennium), the Temple Terrace had a diameter of 60 meters along its long side, with the Temple standing some 12 meters above the level of the Plaza and some 25 meters above the level of the surrounding plain.

The Terrace was framed by a stone revetment wall some 3 meters high that would have been seen from great distances. The impact must have been stunning. In some ways, the structure has the monumentality of an Egyptian pyramid, however different in all other aspects.

To expose it fully, much work remains to be done. But the details we already have allow for a very impressive architectural reconstruction. All the more so as the Temple Terrace became part of a vast urban plan that was put in effect when Tupkish built his Royal Palace around 2300 B.C.

In addition, the historical picture is becoming richer and far more complex than we ever anticipated. In 2006 we were able to attribute with a a degree of plausibility the lions of Tish-atal to a specific construction phase of the Temple complex, thereby providing a stratigraphic home for two very important artifacts, the bronze lions now in the Metropolitan and the Louvre.

In 2007, a major surprise was in store for us. In several places immediately below the third millennium surface of the Temple Terrace we found clear and repeated evidence for a much earlier date, the middle of the fourth millennium. The implications of this are very significant, as we will outline below.